


All the Help We Can Get

by Natassia74



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: A relationship built on trust and respect, Canon Divergent, I kind of forgot about season 7, Romance, Show!Jaime and all that entails, show canon with book canon for flavour
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:41:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21885409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natassia74/pseuds/Natassia74
Summary: “There is a war coming in the north, Ser Jaime, a war such as you have never seen.  The dead are massing beyond the Wall. The Others, the Northmen call them. We need all the help we can get."
Relationships: Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister (mainly past), Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 14
Kudos: 52





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> My attempt to re-imagine an opening to season 7 where Brienne has a plan and a purpose, Jaime is disturbed by Cersei's use of wildfire, and Tyrion is not a complete idiot. 
> 
> I blame an extraordinarily boring plane trip, an old laptop and no wifi for this. For once, it's largely finished, so I hope to post a chapter every day or so over the next few days, as I get time to edit.

_The year 304 AC opened with the crowning of Queen Cersei Lannister, the first of her name, Queen of the Andals and the First Men. The first queen to rule in her own right, the first monarch to bear the Lannister name, and the first ruler_ _since Aegon the Conqueror to be proclaimed by the cries of men but the silence of the bells, the great bell Sept of Baelor having been destroyed in a conflagration that consumed Visenya’s Hill but weeks prior. The new queen’s_ _Hand, a man known only as Qyburn, placed the crown upon her golden head, while in_ _the streets below the gleaming Great Hall, her people choked on dust and ashes._

_To the north, Daenerys of House Targaryan, Daenerys Stormborn, landed her vanguard on her ancestral home of Dragonstone. To the south, a hundred proud ships, newly constructed and under the command of the exiled Greyjoy siblings, Yara and Theon, disgorged tens of thousands of her men onto the shores of the Stormlands. Dothraki savages and hardened unsullied, devoted to her unto death. Above them flew three dragons._

_In the far reaches of Westeros, where winter had come with unprecedented anger, the young King of the North, Jon Snow, consolidated his power, showing mercy to Houses Umber and Karstark, whose previous leaders fought alongside Ramsay Bolton in the Battle of the Bastards. Yet as he built alliances around himself, the young king’s eyes were invariably turned north, to the Wall and beyond, where an army of the dead was gathering…_

_Archmaester_ _Perestan_

_Oldtown, 305 AD_

  
  
  


Lord Jaime Lannister, Commander of the Lannister forces - _what was left of them, anyway_ \- swore in frustration as he tried to focus on the map of Westeros. Things were not looking good. 

The Dragon Queen had launched a devastating two pronged attack. She’d started with the seizure of Dragonstone, which by all accounts had been as easy as landing a ship on the shore and pushing open the doors. _Why had Cersei not garrisoned it?_ Then she’d moved on to raid the Stormlands. Scarcely a greater challenge. In the chaos left in the wake of the war, Daenerys’ thralls has strolled on in and seized Storms End and its surrounds, stepping over the bones of the storm lords who’d just finished wiping each other out. 

It was a clever strategy, Jaime acknowledged. Dragonstone had been abandoned since Stannis left, and the Stormlands were generally fucked. Robert, Stannis and Renly were dead. Shireen was dead. Selyse, dead. Most of Robert’s bastards too. Every Baratheon, in name or blood, dead. _My own three as well._ Dead, dead, dead. 

But Jaime couldn’t think of _them_ , his children, not now. Not when he was facing the wrath of the Daenerys Stormborn and her _three fucking dragons._

Three fucking dragons which were, unbelievably, not even the worst of his problems. Because making their way to Kings Landing, while sacking everything in their path, were tens of thousands of screaming dothraki and mirthless unsullied. Plus forty thousand men from Dorne, and whatever the Tyrells had left. Which was, Jaime thought bitterly, probably most of their army, because the roses had managed to keep their pearly white asses clean throughout the war of five kings, despite being into it up to their necks, and had lost barely a man. 

_But we weren’t complaining when they were on our side, were we?_ He thought sourly. _Which they were, until, sweet sister, you burnt their pretty heirs to cinders._

Ah yes, his sister. _She_ was another thing he couldn’t think of now. Cersei was no doubt sitting in her solar, nursing a cup of wine and congratulating herself over the successful incineration of the Sept of Balor. Using fucking wildfire. While their uncle and their cousin and several of their childhood friends were inside. He shuddered at the unwanted image of Uncle Kevin, his skin melting off. Loras and Margarey too. Granted, he didn't much care for them, but they hadn’t deserved _that._ Had Cersei watched it from her balcony? Had she laughed like Aerys had, when he burnt the Starks? Or just smirked? Either way, the thought made him ill. But there was little to be done about it now. 

_She was desperate._ That was what she had told him, and he had tried to believe her. If _I had been here ..._ but he wasn't. And now nothing would ever be the same.

He stared back at the map. His eyes traced the Stepstones, Cape Wrath. Tarth. _The Sapphire Isle._ He closed his eyes for a moment, and pictured the island, with its green mountains and crystal blue waters. Waters that matched the eyes of its heir. The Maid of Tarth. _Where are you, Brienne?_ Up north somewhere, he supposed. Hoped. Standing tall and strong on some snow-crusted battlement, wearing the blue armour he’d had made for her, Oathkeeper at her side. Unbidden, his hand went to Widow’s Wail, its counterpart, Tommen's blade that now lay against his hip.

The map blurred, and he swallowed hard against the lump in his throat. Shook his head. For fucks sake, was everything a bloody distraction? _I_ _should just stop thinking at all._ Had that not worked well for seventeen years? From the moment he opened Aerys’ scrawny neck to the moment he sat naked in a bath, with _her,_ and let the water wash the dirt away? 

_Stupid, stubborn wench. Stay north, stay safe._

“Head East.” That’s what his military advisors, Marbrand and Daven, said. Take the remains of the Lannister army, and seize Highgarden while it is vulnerable. Use the gold to buy the Golden Company. Or go to Old Town in the hope of an alliance with the Hightowers. _They do not like dragons,_ Qyburn had informed him. But really, who did? Other than Targaryans. And what would Qyburn know anyway? He was as slippery as a greased trout. And the Hightowers, like most Reach families, had managed to find themselves on both sides of just about every war. Why would this one be any different? _But beggers can’t be choosers, and my sweet sister has beggered us all._

He should go _,_ he supposed. Find more would-be allies. Go cup in hand and penitent. But he would have to get there. Weeks by road. The Dragon Queen would not wait that long, not if she had an ounce of sense. And while it was possible she was as stupid as her father, it was a certainty that Tyrion was as clever as his. Tyrion, surely, would urge a swift attack, before winter truly set in, most like. It was coming. The white raven had arrived while he was at Riverrun. 

His eyes drifted eastwards across the map. As like as not, Tyrion had already seized Casterly Rock. That was inevitable. Jaime could already see the plan - a sneak attack through the sewers that his brother had so carefully designed. Jaime had sacrificed the castle, saved his men by removing them, just as Tyrion probably predicted, the crafty little bugger. Still, he’d taken the time to move Edmure and his wife out too, back to Riverrun in chains along with half the Lannister force. Edmure wasn’t getting out _that_ easily, although he probably wouldn’t have much liked the Dragon Queen’s accommodations either. 

The other part of his army was in the Crownlands and the Reach, seizing what food stores they could and courting rebellion while they were at it. Cersei was hated enough without stealing from the smallfolk, but winter was coming and plantings were poor and some kind of centralised distribution seemed the only solution. 

Not for the first time, Jaime wished Tywin were still alive. His father would know what to do. He and Cersei just seemed to fumble about in the dark. _And even that we only do metaphorically now._ They’d not fucked since the night of his return, when, newly crowned, she’d ridden him with passion and abandon before casually telling him Tommen had jumped from a window. _A betrayal,_ she’d called it. In that moment he’d imagined closing his hands around her slender neck and squeezing. Yet the urge had passed, partially because he had only had one hand, but also because she was his twin, his life, his love, and they had just fucked. 

He should have left as soon as he returned from the Riverlands, when he saw the smoking hole where the sept had been, smelt the ashes in the air. Before he saw her. But where would he go? Then news of Dragonstone arrived. Of the fires, the raids, the seizure of Tarth. Their impending doom. It seemed the end was coming, and so he’d stayed. Stayed to protect a queen who had no true claim to the throne, no plan, nothing but a desire for power for power’s sake, and no clue how to wield it. And now he was stuck, a passenger in this out of control carriage, hurtling toward ... what? He had no idea. He knew only that the Targaryan girl was coming with her dragons. 

He shoved a Paperweight weight off the table, watched as the unfurled map rolled shut, hiding the kingdom from his gaze. It was pointless anyway. The Lannisters, like the wretched Baratheons, were fucked. 

He hoped death by fire would be fast, but somehow he doubted it.

…

Several hours of pointless strategizing and one hour of very purposeful drinking later, Jaime found himself wandering the devastated Hill of Visenya and the ruins of the sept. His father’s crypt, and his children’s. 

Cersei had barely bothered giving Tommen a funeral. She’d apparently ordered the body burned and the ashes scattered over the ruins. “He is with his family”, she’d explained, dismissively, between sips of Dornish Red. She rather enjoyed Dornish Red, despite what the Sand Snakes had done to their daughter. It tasted like vinegar on his lips.

Now, his mouth tasted of dust. He looked down at his feet, half buried in grey Ash. He’d kicked the ash up as he walked. It made his eyes water. _Tears_. He was crying, in a way, but without the catharsis. He hadn’t cried for a Tommen, not really. Aren't men meant to go mad with grief over dead sons? Tear their hair or grow it long or something? Or was that women? He had cried over Myrcella, so he was capable of it, but he felt nothing now, just utterly numb.   
  
He’d lost a father, a brother, an uncle, his house and titles and his hand. And now he was loosing Cersei too, or perhaps she had lost herself, to ambition and bitterness and rage. 

He squatted down and picked up a handful of the ash, let is fall through his fingers. Was any part of Tommen in there, a grain of dust? If so, this was as close as he’d ever get to holding him, now. 

He sat there for minutes, hours, until from behind him came the sound of footsteps and a clank of metal. He started, dropped the dust with a shake of his hand. He turned, anticipating Bronn, bracing for some sarcastic observation. 

Instead, he saw a ghost. A ghost with pale white hair, broad shoulders, and starking sapphire eyes. 

It couldn’t be. He blinked desperately. He was mad. Or drunk. Or both.

“You can’t be here,” he said.

“Ser Jaime.”

It was Brienne’s voice, warm and calm. 

It was impossible, but there she was. 

He scrambled to his feet, sending up a cloud of dirt that he promptly inhaled. He coughed, and battered the dust away futilely. 

“What are you doing here?” He choked out.

“Looking for you. I was told you’d be here. And that _she_ wouldn’t.”

Bronn must have told her, he figured. Who _she_ was needed no explanation. 

“But, why?”

Brienne hesitated for a moment, as if searching for words. Her hand, grasping her sword - Oathkeeper - trembled. She looked nervous, even startled, almost as if it were he who came come across her in Winterfell, rather than she upon him in Kings Landing. 

She made him feel like a stammering squire in turn. 

“Lady Brienne, why are you here?” he asked, again, more quietly. 

She stroked the pommel. “I have been tasked to meet with you, to parlay.”

He hadn’t expected that. “Parlay for what?”

“A temporary peace. Jon Snow is meeting with Queen Daenerys, but he thought perhaps...” she waived, again searching for words. 

Jaime finished for her, “.. he thought perhaps that a knight was better suited to negotiating with the Kingslayer and the doomed pretender than the King of the North?”

It was sounded bitter, resentful, and Brienne looked stung. 

“No insult was meant, Ser Jaime. You are your queen’s protector, and I am my lady’s, and her king’s. His Grace said you are the only one your queen will listen to,” she paused at that and met his eyes. “And I am the only one of her people that you are like to trust.”

Well, that much was true. He watched her carefully. Her gaze was calm, but there was a question in her large, blue eyes. A hesitation. Did she doubt he trusted her? Well, now it was his turn to feel stung. But his mouth acted on its own.

“I do,” he whispered, almost defensively. “Trust you, that is.”

 _I trust you._ The words were an echo from the past, a time when their lives were deeply intertwined, when half-mad, half-starved and newly missing a hand, he had said many things best left unsaid. _I could not bear her disdain,_ he remembered. And so he’d tried to impress her by spilling his life’s secrets and fainting. He’d thought those days the worst of his life at the time, and yet in many ways they were more pleasant than the present. 

But that shared history made it very dangerous for her to be here. Deadly, even. Cersei was not like to forget, especially not after Riverrun. “ _Tell_ _Ser Jaime I have his sword,_ ” Brienne had announced, bold as brass, to half the bloody camp. What was she thinking? Clearly not about the jokes could be made about _that,_ no doubt fanned by bloody Bronn. They had eventually reached Cersei, of course, and hadn’t that been an uncomfortable conversation. 

“ _Yes, Cersei, she had my sword. The steel one..._ _Y_ e _s, my priceless Valyrian one, what of it ..._ _I only want you, only you ... “_

But words were wind and Valyrian Steel was cold and hard and true. Cersei was no fool. And if she found Brienne _here_...well...

He gave a furtive look around the ruined hill top, the black crater. “Do you know what the Queen will do if she finds you here?” 

Brienne appraised him coolly. “Are you going to tell her?” 

“Of course not! But you put me in a difficult position.”

She rolled her eyes at that. “You’re already in one. Daenerys will be here in days.”

Did she think him an idiot? 

“I _know,”_ he ground out. “And when she does, we are fucked. I know that too. And you must as well, so why are you here?” 

_Why are you here, where you are in danger?_

Brienne fixed him with those clam, deep eyes. “Jaime, you don’t have to die.”

“No?” He laughed. “What are you proposing? Surrender? Cersei would rather remove her eyeballs with a spoon.” _And mine for suggesting it._

“No.” Brienne pulled herself up to her quite considerable height, looming above him. “Not surrender. Escape, but with purpose. You join us.”

Jaime blinked. _Of all the things ..._ He wondered momentarily if it was Brienne who had gone mad.

“What?”

“There is a war coming in the north, Ser Jaime, a war such as you have never seen. The dead are massing beyond the Wall. The _Others,_ the northmen call them. We need all the help we can get.”

"An army of the dead?" Had she gone mad? He laughed harder, sounding almost manic even to his own ears. “I don’t know what is less likely, _that_ , or that you need me, a cripple who struggles with his breaches, to assist you with them?”

The look that flashed across her face at his self-deprecation was passingly soft, sympathetic, _maidenly,_ but she caught herself and it hardened almost immediately. 

“We need a commander with a spare army. And you’re the only one _I_ know.”

Huh. Well, at least it made a kind of sense. Still, this could not be real. Was the Snow boy playing some trick? He sighed, and rubbed his eyes. “Very well, I am listening.”

And so Brienne told him about the army of the dead. He was incredulous, but she was stubborn. And as crazy as it sounded, there had to be _something_ in it, because this was Brienne, the most honourable soldier in the Seven Kingdoms, and someone who couldn’t lie straight in bed...then, horrifyingly, his mind wandered to Brienne in bed, a sheet draped over her broad chest, not quite hiding her breasts... and he must have missed something important, because when he came back to himself, she was looking at him with her huge, blue eyes, _beautiful eyes,_ waiting for an answer. 

“Leave King’s Landing to Daenerys, to your brother, and come with me now,” she repeated. “We can meet your men at Riverrun, take them north. You can help us, and Jon will help you.”

She seemed so earnest he could almost believe she was serious. He contemplated. It _was_ a surrender, but not one without face. And no one needed to die by dragon.

“Cersei will never agree,” he said, reluctantly. “And I cannot leave her.”

Was it hurt that flashed across Brienne's face at that, or frustration?

“You can make her come with you.”

_Ah, but you do not know Cersei, my lady.  
_

“If only it were that easy.” 

He groaned, run a hand over his face. Did she really expect him to abduct and carry his sister? _Probably._ Gods, this was giving him hope. Leave, surrender the city, avoid a confrontation, save Cersei’s life, and the city. 

He needed time to think.

“And what will do you?” he asked her suddenly, if only to give himself a moment’s pause. _Something honourable no doubt._

Her face fell into a rictus of grief. “My father …” 

_Of course._

“He was alive, last I heard,” Jaime said gently. “He surrendered Tarth when the dragons arrived, saved his people. 

The brief hope in her eyes made his heart swell. 

“How do you know?”

 _I inquired, wench, because he is your father._ But for some reason, he did not want her to know that. 

“Cersei was ranting about traitors and he was among the names on her lips,” he shrugged instead.

“Oh…” She looked both indignant, and relieved. 

Jaime swallowed down a sudden lump in his throat. “You cannot be thinking of going to him.”

“I…” She coloured. _Ah yes, she was._ That would be a death sentence, and he couldn’t have that. No, it was very important that _not_ happen. 

Impulsively, he reached out gently, cautiously, and put his hand on her shoulder. “You cannot get there Brienne. Not from here. There’s a war going on, you know.”

She looked startled. Had she really not thought of that?

She looked down at his hand, where is lay on her arm. After a moment, she nodded, sadly, and said, “I know.”

“Good. I’d hate to have to lock you in that tower again."

She near growled at that idea. _Too much time around wolves._ He raised his stump placatingly. "I'm joking. Besides if I am going on this fool quest, you’re coming with me. It was your idea, after all, and who else would be thick enough to vouchsafe for the honour of the likes of me?”

His good hand was still on her arm, and she raised her hand to his, squeezing gently before dropping it again nearly as quickly. “Anyone who knows you as I do,” she told him, not quite meeting his eyes. 

It was all he needed to hear. The answer, of course, was _no one._ No one knew him as Brienne did. She was their only hope. They would be leaving. Just as soon as he convinced Cersei.


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Surrender my crown?” Cersei laughed, as if the idea were a delusion rather than a looming reality. 
> 
> “They will seize it anyway, Cersei. Best it not be on your head when they do.”

Jaime put Brienne’s proposal to Cersei that night. As he predicted, she laughed in his face. 

The queen was eating mud crab and oysters for dinner, her long fingers dipping the white meat into a brown sauce that smelled like something had died in it. “It's from Lys,” she had advised him, as if that explained everything, or indeed anything. 

_People are starving, and she’s importing a sauce of rotting fish._

“The Targaryans will be here in mere days,” he warned her, frustration pooling in his empty stomach. “We cannot defend the city. We cannot even feed it. Our presence here puts everyone at risk. If you want to live, we have to go.”

“And surrender my crown?” she laughed, as if the idea were a delusion rather than a looming reality. 

“They will seize it anyway, Cersei. Best it not be on your head when they do.”

“ _They_ _,”_ she turned the word over in her mouth. “Presumably a different ‘they’ to the ones who made this offer? Who was that anyway?”

Her green eyes were dangerous, knowing. 

“Someone I can trust” he answered, honestly. But obfuscation was pointless with Cersei. She knew everything, she always did. 

“Why so coy?” She asked, as she sucked a plump oyster from its shell. “Are you ashamed of your shambling saviour?” She discarded the empty shell on a plate. “I hear she’s rather fond of you. If we’re contemplating travelling together, perhaps she should come to dinner?”

“She’s not one for company.” _Especially yours._

“Or eating with cutlery, I imagine.” 

Jaime frowned, but didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he pointedly stuck his own fork in a finely cut square of pumpkin. The kitchen staff knew to make dinner easy for him. If he left, he’d have his own problems with cutlery. Still, a small price to pay, to live. 

“Think about it, Cersei. Think hard. I want us to see our next nameday.”

Brienne had given him five days. He was going to need them. 

…

He tried again the next day. 

He had woken to the smell of smoke in the air, and a grey cloud loomed on the southern horizon, turning the sun a dark orange. The Dragon Queen’s armies were burning the Kingswood.

 _Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll forget to leave sufficient trees to make trebuchets,_ he mused. Until he remembered Daenerys had dragons, so wouldn’t need any. The ruined towers of Harranhal loomed large in his mind. 

Still, the ominous air, a decanter of wine and the looming threat of a dothraki horde and death by dragon fire had at least made Cersei somewhat contemplative. 

“And where would the sad eyed cow take us?” she asked. 

“North.”

“To live as smallfolk? Scrounging in the dirt?”

“To fight for the living, Cersei. To save the world.”

“I don’t care about the world. Let it burn.”

“You can’t mean that.”

 _Except she could, couldn’t she?_ She’d let their uncle burn, along with several long term acquaintances and dozens of collateral smallfolk. Why not add more to the pyre?

“You meant it, once,” she smiled at his over her goblet, voice wistful but eyes challenging. “You promised you’d kill everyone else in the world for me. Well, here we are. I’m not asking you to murder them, merely suggesting we let them die.”

He had said that, once, hadn’t he? It had seemed so romantic at the time, he and Cersei against the cruel world. Had he really meant it? He’d thought so at the time. But that was a time when talking about mass murdering strangers was easier than thinking of that Stark kid and his broken legs. 

Cersei appeared to be enjoying his discomfort. She smirked and took another drink. 

Later, when Cersei had retired to her solar, Jaime summoned Bronn and handed him a letter for Brienne, scrawled in his large, careful hand. _“I’m working on it, give me time.”_

The sellsword shamelessly opened it and read it immediately. “Fuck time, just knock ‘er out and let’s leave”. 

“I have thought about it, but there’s always a Mountain between us,” Jaime muttered in reply. Which idiot taught him to read anyway? 

“What, ‘at all times’?” Bronn laughed and leered. “Wait, no, I don’t want to know the answer to that.”

Which was good, because Jaime didn't have one that wasn't embarrassing. The looming monstrosity was bloody annoying. 

….

The third day was marginally more successful. 

He found Cersei in her solar, reading a scroll from the ravenry. Always playing games, she didn’t offer to share. “Destroy it,” she told her maid, handing the parchment to her. Jaime tried to look uninterested, but if Cersei’s satisfied smirk was anything to go by, he’d failed at that too. 

“Tell your little hangdog bitch I’m considering it,” she said, between delicate bites of her breakfast. 

This morning’s meal was hens eggs, duck eggs, roast rooster and pigeon pie, displayed alongside a brilliant plume of peacock feathers. “It is an auspicious day for poultry,” Cersei’s maid informed him with a giggly smile as he arrived. Given how many birds likely died for the morning display, Jaime would have concluded the opposite.

“Consider more quickly. I don’t know how long Lady Brienne wait,” he warned.

Cersei snorted. “She’s not going anywhere, not while her dog might throw her a _bone_.”

The last word was loaded with obscenity, and he was in no mood for it, and in no mood for an argument either. 

“Enjoy your fowl while you can,” he said, and left. He had a suicidal battle to strategise, after all. 

Jaime made his way outside, only to find the courtyard between Maeghor’s Hold and White Sword Tower packed with smallfolk. Cersei had let them in, apparently, offering protection from the approaching Dothraki. Those who accepted her offer must have been too dim or too desperate to realise the price would be their lives.

He tried not to look at them, but they didn’t make it easy. A small boy ran past him, a skinny girl behind. A young mother cradled her child, an old man huddled against a wall. Cersei’s words rung in his ears. _“I’m not asking you to murder them, merely suggesting we let them die”._ Did she think that more honourable? Did he? He momentarily considered warning them, even ordering them to get out, but that would doubtless result in a riot, and in any case where would they go?

Suddenly, Jaime needed to be away from there, away from the Keep and the politics and Cersei. Had his sister not just given him leave to go? _Not that I need Cersei’s permission,_ he assured himself, without conviction. When had he become so cautious of her? 

_Probably when she started burning people’s skins off with wildfire._

_Didn’t_ I _kill another king for that?  
_

 _Fuck it._ He returned to to the Hold, found a cowled cloak and headed out.

Brienne had taken a room in a moderately priced inn near the docks, and he made his way there, the hood pulled low over his head, his hand covered with a glove and his distinctive green eyes determinedly fixed on his feet. 

He hit his head on the lintel when he entered the inn. Why was everything for smallfolk always so bloody _small?_

Brienne was still breakfasting in a corner of the common room, her huge figure dwarfing the table and bench. He watched from the shadows as she listlessly stirred a greyish soup, taking in her plain features, her awful haircut, the possible new scar on her cheek, her irritating air of righteousness and determination. Gods, he had missed her. 

Perhaps sensing she was being watched, Brienne looked up cautiously. She recognised him immediately, despite the cloak, and he felt a shiver of pride at the pleasure in her eyes. _She probably_ _just wants out of here herself,_ he told himself firmly as he took a seat at her table, _and she thinks I’m here say ‘yes’._ Well, he was going to disappoint her, but it was far from the first time.

He went to her and sat down, let her order another round. They waited in silence until it arrived, fleetingly catching each other’s eyes. The ale was awful and the soup even worse, mainly water with dead flies for flavour. _Is this what the smallfolk are reduced to?_ _How do they eat this swill?_ Suddenly he really did have half a mind to invite her back to the Keep for a meal. He imagined Cersei’s outrage, his own insouciant reply. _But Sweet sister, you offered._ But that was as tantamount to suicide as staying to see the dragons. 

Brienne was watching him, waiting for him.

“This inn is as cheery as you, my lady,” he offered, finally, because he couldn’t resist needling her. 

She shrugged. “Not much for any of us to smile about. Has the Queen seen sense?” 

She may as well have asked if Cersei had seen Jonquil and Florian, although these days she was drinking so much it was possible she had. 

Jaime sighed, and settled in to relay his tale of his efforts. Brienne scowled in response, but didn’t criticise him. She was always scowling, frowning, teasing out that little crease above her nose. _Bloody dour wench._ The last time he’d seen her smile was the sad, sympathetic look she’d given him when they arrived back at Kings Landing and some chicken-shit covered peasant had pushed him out of the way. Did she perhaps smile when she found Sansa? When she trained with Pod? When she, by the account he heard, put her blade through a paralysed Stannis and avenged her precious Renly? Did she do that _slowly..._

“The queen will be the death of you,” Brienne told him when he finished. 

He shrugged. She was already his damnation. But Brienne sounded so concerned _,_ like she was personally hurt by how fucking disappointing he was. He was sick of fighting. Sick of lying and politics. Sick of it all really. 

“I don’t want to talk about my sister,” he declared. “Or politics.”

Brienne looked up at him in surprise at that, as if Cersei and politics had covered the field of topics between them. “Of what do you wish to speak?”

For a moment, his mind went blank. _What indeed?_ Then a hundred topics run through his head, from “how the fuck are you even real?” to “are you still a maiden?” The last was like to get him injured, so he went with something safe. 

”How are you, Brienne?” he asked. 

..

Once they started talking, they couldn’t stop. Well, _he_ couldn’t stop. He spoke of the weather and of rebuilding after the battle of Blackwater Bay. Of the gossip about Daenerys. Of his brother, of the dreadful personalities on Cersei’s smallest council, and, very briefly, of Myrcella and Tommen. Nothing that would betray Cersei, but things he could not talk to his sister about either. Brienne sat there, quietly, mainly listening and only occasionally speaking. Watching him.

Hours passed, and the sun was high when he realised it was time to go. Reluctantly, he stood up to leave, and Brienne _almost_ smiled at him. It was only a flicker, but it was something. He felt a belt tighten around his chest.

“Good luck tonight, Ser Jaime,” she said in farewell. 

He nodded, and turned to leave. Then he paused at the door to the inn and looked back at her. _I should tell her to leave, now, without me,_ he realised. _Tell her I will never convince Cersei, and that she should run while she can._ That’s what a good man would do. But he wasn’t a good man, and he couldn’t bear it. 

“See you tomorrow,” he promised, with a nod. 

He starred up at the afternoon sun, red behind the smoke. He had confirmation that he was being watched. If Cersei hadn’t been spying on him, she’d have sent a rescue party by now. 

…

Later that afternoon, a dragon flew overhead. 

It did nothing but skirt lazily above the Blackwater, like a cat considering whether it could be bothered to swoop on a mouse. Old Tom, possibly seeing a kindred spirit, watched it jealously. 

The people of King’s Landing, of course, panicked, and Jaime had to send Ser Addam and his gold cloaks into Flea Bottom to restore order. More death, more blood on the streets. Cersei joked over dinner that distributing the corpses could solve their food shortage. Qyburn laughed obsequiously. Jaime stared at the pinkish pork on his plate and decided he wasn’t hungry.  
  
Cersei drank several serves of port for desert and then started on a decanter of gold from the Reach as she outlined her plans for revenge. They seemed far too contingent on Euron Greyjoy, a man she barely knew, who had tried his luck with the other queen first. 

“I may need to pretend to contemplate a marriage,” she warned, a glint in her eye.

Was this her idea of teasing him, making him mad with lust? Still, her short gold hair glimmered in the candle light, and when she smiled coyly he wanted her again, like it used to be, when she was his. He kissed to shut her up. 

Cersei dragged him to her sleeping chambers, her lips hungrily reaching for his, her hands pulling at his laces. He picked her up and laid her on the covers, tried to work the complicated buttons of her dress with one hand. She muttered in frustration, and he grew clumsier in turn. By the time he finally released the fabric, bit her neck and got his hand on her breast, she had ceased to paw at him and started to snore.

He lay still for a moment, panting, Cersei’s wine-soaked breath hot against his ear. Then pushed himself off her, almost hastily. He was still hard and aching, but as he stared down at her sleeping form, he found that he was, oddly, deeply relieved. 

He left the room, closing the door behind him, and ignoring the Mountain that stood guard outside it.

….

“Leave. Just go,” he commanded Brienne, when he saw her the next morning. The dragon, _Seven save them_ , had given him the strength to lose her. If Cersei wouldn’t see sense, at least he could free Brienne. 

“Not without you,” she replied, jaw set stubbornly. It was a vow and a promise and he knew, just _knew,_ that she’d be too stubborn to break it, even with a hoard of dothraki screamers bearing down on them. 

Bronn rolled his eyes at the exchange, and then spent the evening grumbling about stupid blonde toffs with shit for brains. 

“I’m going to knock the both of you out,” he announced, as they shared the last of the decent ale. “And drag you Both to that bloody boat. Leave that cunt sister of yours to her fate. And don’t think I won’t do it. You still owe be a castle.”

...

That afternoon, the dothraki vanguard arrived, a day earlier than expected. A thunder of hooves, hollering and chanting. _Do they mean to irritate us to death,_ Jaime wondered.

But of course, the smallfolk panicked. Again. Several died in the scramble to get inside the walls of the Keep. Ser Addam’s men were ordered to kill a couple more when they breached Maeghor’s Hold and Cersei demanded “a lesson”. 

“I didn’t join the gold cloaks to murder chandlers and washerwomen,” Marbrand told him sadly, as they watched the bodies being hauled away, red blood and entrails staining the tiles. His old friend’s words were close to treason, but Jaime let them go. 

He thought of Rhaegar, and his meaningless assurances. “ _I mean to call a council...changes will be made.”_ The prince had then rode forth to his doom, doing what he’d always done, fuck all and nothing. Empty words, casual promises, hoping that someone else would solve the problem. Jaime was tired of that shit, as tired as he had been the night he slew Aerys. 

Cersei and he needed to leave, for everyone’s sake, and there was no point in delaying it any longer.

“We’re fucked,” he conceded to Addam. “All I can do is make it as painless as possible.”

“Any way it happens, it is going to hurt,” Addam warned in reply. “Your sister yes, but the smallfolk the most...” 

“Maybe.”

“You have a plan?” Addam sounded incredulous.

“Of course I do.” Why was this so bloody surprising? Why did people only remember he was Tywin’s son when he threatened someone?

He told Addam as much as he could, which was very little, beyond “we’re leaving, you’re surrendering”. 

“When they come, try to surrender to Tyrion. He’ll show mercy.” _More than Cersei at any rate._

This was treason on his part too, but Cersei would not be queen for long enough to do anything about it. 

Jaime impulsively clutched his friend’s shoulder with his clumsy left hand. “Take care, Addam.”

Addam nodded. “You too, Jaime. Try not to die.” 

_A good man,_ Jaime thought morosely as he watched Marbrand’s retreating form. _My oldest friend, and now even he has a reason to hate me_. 

He made his way to Cersei’s solar.

He’d resolved to press the point with Cersei, to force her to leave it he had too, but he didn’t need to. Maybe it was the horde on the doorstep or the dragon overhead, but Cersei was already dressed in a heavy velvet dress and a travelling cloak with a cowl. Unfortunately, she had more baggage in the form of Qyburn and her Mountain, Robert Strong.

Strong was loaded with valuables as if he were an upright mule, while Qyburn wore but a robe and an ingratiating smile

”We’ll follow your Beast,” Cersei announced, as if it were she who was granting an indulgence. “But if she so much as thinks about betraying us, I will know. I will let the Mountain have his fun with her, and when he’s finished with her, I’ll give what’s left of her to Qyburn.”

 _I’d like to see you try,_ Jaime thought, but he said, ”And what do you think the northmen will do to us then?”  
  
Cersei didn’t answer.

He lead them down, through the concealed door, and into the bowels of the keep to the meeting spot.

Understandably, Brienne wasn’t happy with the expanded party. She glared at Qyburn with an intensity that burned the grin off his face. 

“I didn’t offer to take your monster,” Brienne hissed at him, looking at Strong and Qyburn. “Either of them.” 

_All of them_ , Jaime thought sourly, glancing in turn at Cersei. The evil queen and her zombie. When had his family become a thing of horror? But Cersei wasn’t going without them, and he wasn’t going without her, and Brienne wasn’t leaving without him, so they’d have to make the best of it.

He flashed his best grin, the one he’d used to convince her to take the Payne lad. “He’ll be great against the dead. Knows all about them…”. He took a step toward her, and more softly, his eyes fixed on the monster, warned “...any attempt to leave anyone behind now would probably result in all of our deaths.”

Brienne wrinkled her nose, as if he smelt bad, then rolled her eyes in resignation. “Let’s just get out of here.” 

As Bronn had so cleverly predicted, their escape route was a boat, a small one, pulled up on the pebbly shore. The sellsword had chosen to find another route.

The little vessel was guarded by a bearded older man with a skeptical look on his face. 

“The party grew,” Brienne answered his unspoken question. “It seemed wiser to take them than leave them, given the circumstances.”

“Not so sure about that,” the man answered in a strong fleabottom accent. “Good chance we’re gonna sink with all this dead weight.”

Jaime felt Cersei stiffen beside him, no doubt about to say something imperious and insulting, but he put his hand on her arm in warning. Now was not the time to insult one's rescuers. 

“We don’t have to get far,” Brienne said calmly, but she couldn’t disguise the touch of nervousness in her voice. 

At the shoreline, Cersei looked disdainfully at the ankle-deep water. Brienne gaped at her, and Jaime rolled his eyes. _For fucks sake._ Once she’d been the kind of girl to run into the ocean first, dragging him in after her, and now she refused to get her dainty slippers soggy. He sighed inwardly and turned to pick her up, but she pushed his arms aside and looked to Strong instead. Without complaint or comment, the Mountain lifted her up as if she were a doll and strolled through the water to deposit her in the boat. 

“‘Get in,” Cersei commanded the creature, and Strong climbed into the boat. The shabby little thing instantly sunk dangerously low, water splashing over the edges to fall on Cersei’s feet. 

“This is a dreadful rescue,” she observed ungratefully. 

“It’s not a rescue, it’s an escape. But you’re welcome to get back on land, _your grace_ ” said the older man.

Meanwhile Brienne’s hands tightened on the edge of the boat. Jaime almost hoped she’d slap his sweet sister, but Brienne was too honourable for that.

“You’re lucky we need your men,” she said to Jaime as he passed her.

The boat was already worryingly crowded, and there were four to go.

Jaime glanced at Qyburn, but the former maester raised a small, soft hand. “I shall join you in due course,” he said helpfully. “But not on this.” His eyes were fixed on Cersei as he spoke, as if exchanging some kind of message. 

_There is something more to this,_ Jaime realised. _Something I don’t yet see._

Next to him, Brienne’s hand went to her sword. Qyburn raised his hands plaintiffly. “I intend no harm to my queen,” he said smoothly. “You must know that.”

 _That_ Jaime almost believed. The strange little man had an almost touching loyalty to his sister. But it wasn’t his sister’s welfare he was concerned about.

“We’re wastin’ time,” the older man said. “Kill him or leave him but get in the bloody boat.”

Jaime shrugged. He wasn’t about the cut the man down on the beach, particularly given he _had_ saved his arm. He did as he was bid and climbed in the boat.

Then the older man and Brienne pushed them off before jumping in. The boat tilted dangerously, the rim barely above the waterline. Once away, Brienne grabbed the oars and began to pull on them with obvious skill. Robert Strong watched her passively. Jaime squirmed uncomfortably, but he couldn’t help, not unless they wanted to row in a circle, and changing positions would be a bad idea anyway.

“I’m cold,” moaned Cersei, within minutes. 

“You’re welcome to warm up with a little rowing,” offered the older man. 

Cersei snorted, offended, and looked to Jaime to defend her. He had nothing to say but _get_ _use to it._

Still, he wrapped his arms around his sister and tried to warm her. _Better alive and humiliated than dead,_ he thought, remembering his year of shitting in a bucket. But he had no idea if Cersei shared that view. She’d never forgive him for this indignity, of _that_ he was certain. But as he watched Brienne haul on the oars, her huge arms flexing as she rowed them to safety, her gaze lost somewhere over the water, he wondered if he even cared. 

….

Time passed, and Brienne stopped rowing, other than to stabilise the little dingy as it drifted, the water lapping against its sides. 

Cersei had fallen asleep, her head on his shoulder. Strong sat silent beside them, although whether guarding her or meditating or dreaming of slaughtering puppies, Jaime couldn’t tell. The older man also sat quietly. 

Brienne, a boat and death of their heels. It was all oddly familiar. “Just like old times,” he joked. 

He could still picture her on that river, hauling the oars as he lazed against the hull, looking up at her, drunk on wine and sunlight and hope. He’d thought her the ugliest wench in the world, that day, and while her looks hadn’t exactly _improved,_ he found her rather enjoyed looking at her. She was comforting and familiar and _right_ in a way he almost found attractive. 

“People do constantly want to kill you _,_ ” she observed with a soft smile.

“And fortunately I once again have you to defend me.”

Her eyes glittered in the moonlight. _Astonishing eyes._ He wished he could see their blue. She opened her mouth to say something, but they were interrupted before she could answer. A shadow loomed on the dark horizon, a bigger ship.

“We’re here,” the older man said. 

He woke Cersei, and soon they clamoured onto the cog, the monstrous Strong carrying his queen, tall and silent, up the creaking and complaining rope ladder. Brienne watched them with obvious distaste. 

“If that’s Clegane, his Grace will never pardon him,” she whispered.

“If he can prove it’s Clegane, he’s welcome to kill him,” Jaime replied neutrally. “Actually, he is welcome to do it anyway.”

With that, Jaime turned and climbed awkwardly up the rope, cursing his missing hand, his foolish sister, her monster, Qyburn, and that bloody ugly chair.


End file.
